The city will tighten its watch on the circulation of medical drugs as the second phase of its trading supervision system gets underway at the Shanghai food and drug administration (FDA).

The system supervises drugs and vaccines purchased by the city's disease control center, hospitals and general drug stores.

If any accidents occur involving 'fake' medicines or adverse drug reactions, Shanghai FDA will trace the entire batch of medicine within a 20-minute period.

"The supervision network has been in use since last year," Xu Wei, a spokesman for Shanghai FDA.

The existing network covers all 128 drug wholesale companies in Shanghai, and 98 percent of the drug trade throughout the city.

The system also requires that all these wholesale companies report each purchase and sale - as well as where they bought the product, whom the drugs were sold to, and other product details.

"Construction of the second phase mainly involves perfection and upgrading of the existing network," Xu said.

"Like solving technical problems and removing bugs from the system."

Added into the supervision system will be vaccines, contraceptive pills, as well as medicine purchased from out of Shanghai by medical institutions and drug retailers.

Traditionally, when adverse drug reactions occur, large teams are deployed to trace the medicine's traffic history in order to stop its expansion.

Two years ago, a national pursuit was launched when a fake drug from the No 2 Pharmaceutical Company of Qiqihar killed several people. Shanghai FDA took a whole week and 15,000 supervising visits to more than 3,000 retailers before they resolved the issue.

Earlier this year, with the launch of the supervision system, Shanghai FDA successfully traced the origin of an immunoglobulin injection produced by the Baiyi Pharmaceutical Company from Guangdong Province within just 10 minutes after receiving notification about the problem.

Also included in the phase II supervision network are anesthetics and drugs for mental problems made in Shanghai.

These drugs are placed under supervision of the national FDA during the production and transportation process until they go into wholesale and reach medical institutions and retailers.

Supervision for the production, trade and use of these special drugs will be carried out in a joint effort with medical institutions, the Shanghai Morning Post reported, so that every injection or pill can be easily traced.

(China Daily October 10, 2007)